KR20060102484A - System and method for highlighting a domain in a browser display - Google Patents

Abstract

Disclosed are a system and method for highlighting a domain within a browser display. In short, the browsing software is configured to parse the address to identify important parts such as domain names related to the content being displayed. Important parts of the address are displayed in a highlighted or otherwise highlighted manner, thus allowing the user to visually distinguish whether or not to trust the source of the displayed content.

Domain, address, browser display, parsing

Description

System and method for highlighting domains within a browser display {SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HIGHLIGHTING A DOMAIN IN A BROWSER DISPLAY}

1 is a functional block diagram generally illustrating a system for retrieving content with browsing software from a remote location, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

2 is a functional block diagram illustrating components of browsing software implementing one embodiment of the present invention.

3 illustrates several different URLs formatted according to a particular implementation of the invention.

4 is an operational flow diagram generally illustrating a process for highlighting a significant portion of a URL within a browser display.

5 is a functional block diagram illustrating a sample computing device that may be used in the implementation of the present invention.

<Explanation of symbols for the main parts of the drawings>

112: the Internet

210: Browsing Software

215: graphical interface

212 parser

214: formatter

253: rendering engine

The various embodiments described below generally relate to browsing software, and in particular, but not exclusively, to personal digital security while using the browsing software.

The Internet has been widely accepted by consumers. Today, people frequently use the Internet to conduct business or deal with others on a regular basis. For example, many people use the Internet to make online banking or manage their credit card accounts. The acceptance of the Internet has given rise to certain malicious people who are trying to exploit some people who lack an understanding of Internet software. Malicious people use a scheme known as "phishing," for example, to trick unwary Internet users into thinking that they are on a trusted site when they are actually on a malicious personal site. Malicious people exploit this misconception by prompting users for four specific personal details, such as bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords for user login I.D., and these phishing schemes seem to be more efficient than they think.

Conscientious software developers constantly work to improve the security of transactions on the Internet. Improving this security will improve the economic value of the Internet for such software developers and general commercial retailers. In particular, improving the user's trust that the site the user is currently viewing is actually an authentication site will establish trust in the overall security of the Internet.

To date, those skilled in the art have not known a suitable mechanism for conveying the legitimacy of a web site to a user.

The present invention is directed to techniques and mechanisms for implementing automated systems and methods for highlighting domains within a browser display. In short, the browsing software is configured to parse the address to identify important parts such as domain names related to the content being displayed. Important parts of the address are displayed in a highlighted or otherwise highlighted manner, thus allowing the user to visually distinguish whether or not to trust the displayed content.

Non-limiting and non-exclusive embodiments are described with reference to the following drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the several views unless otherwise specified.

The following description is directed to a system and method for highlighting or highlighting important portions of a URL within a browser display. Generally speaking, the graphical interface in the browsing software is configured to display the address of the current site or page using the domain of the highlighted address. Now, a specific implementation of this general concept will be described.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram generally illustrating a system 100 for conducting transactions or retrieving information over the Internet 112. Within system 100 are included a graphical display, “legal” server 110 and “illegal” server 114 generated by browsing software 130 running on a client computing system (not shown). Each of these components is connected through a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet 112. Legal server 110 is a computing system associated with a legitimate entity or business, such as banking online access, electronic retailers, and the like. In this example, the legal entity is located in the domain "yourbank.com".

The illegal server 114 is a computing device under the control of some malicious or bad entity controlled by individuals who are intended to trick people into believing that the illegal site 114 is actually a legitimate site 110. In this example, illegal site 114 resides in domain "hackers.com." It should be noted here that the domains "yourbank.com" and "hackers.com" are used only as examples and are intended to represent the general concepts of legal and illegal sites for the sake of simplicity. Both the inventor and the assignee of this patent specification are not intended to be of any significance to a particular domain or to each owner, even if actually present.

A user uses browsing software 130 to visit (or “surf”) various locations on the Internet 112, such as legal location 110. In one example, legal location 110 may be online access for a user's banking. In this particular example, the user may have typed a universal resource locator (URL) in the address bar 135 of the browsing software 130. Alternatively, the user may have clicked on a link in another web page, or perhaps an email delivered to the user. The resulting web page 137 prompts the user to enter personally identifiable information 140 such as a username and password, credit card number and expiration, bank account number, PIN number, social security number, and the like.

In general, a common feature of browsing software is the ability to view a URL within address bar 135, or a universal resource identifier (URI) that identifies a particular location of content currently being rendered by browsing software 130. However, in conventional techniques, most important aspects of the URL may be obscured by the presence of many other less important components such as protocol identifiers, any script names, parameters passed to such scripts, and the like. Thus, the user cannot easily determine that the site currently being viewed is not the expected site. For example, the user may have clicked a link in a mail message that the user thought would reach a site maintained by the legitimate site 110 (eg, a location within the domain "yourbank.com"). However, the link may actually lead to a site maintained on an illegal site 114 created to look similar to the legitimate site 110. In this manner, a user may be deceived to provide personal information 140 to malicious or bad people who control the illegal site 114.

In accordance with the present invention, a portion of the URL in the address bar 135 is provided in a manner that highlights or distinguishes that portion from the rest of the URL. In this particular implementation, the domain name "www.yourbank.com" is rendered in a bold (or otherwise highlighted) font, while the rest of the URL is rendered in normal font. In this way, the user's attention is directed to an important part of the URL, thus increasing the likelihood that the user will determine that he or she is on an illegal site 114 rather than the expected legal site 110.

2 is a functional block diagram illustrating software components of browsing software 210 configured in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. Browsing software 210 may be any software component or module that supports retrieval and viewing of content from a WAN, such as the Internet, using the TCP / IP protocol. Browsing software 210 may be implemented as a function or module of code in the operating system, as a standalone application, or any combination of the two.

In this implementation, the browsing software 210 includes a rendering engine 253 configured to render content commonly used by internet programmers. For example, rendering engine 253 translates HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and eXtensible HTML (XHTML), and renders web pages generated in such markup language or many other markup languages and retrieved through the Internet 112. It can be configured to render. Rendering content from Internet sites is well known in the art.

The browsing software 210 also includes a graphical interface 215 configured to generate a visual display of the content currently rendered by the rendering engine 253. The graphical interface 215 is also configured to display specific information about the content, such as an address that includes the URL of the current content. In this implementation, graphical interface 215 interfaces with two other components, parser 212 and formatter 214. Parser 212 is responsible for parsing the URL of each site displayed by graphical interface 215 into specific component parts. In particular, parser 212 identifies at least a portion of a URL that is particularly important to the security or integrity of the current site. For example, a domain name (eg, "microsoft.com") is often the most important part of a typical URL described in more detail with respect to FIG.

The formatter 214 is configured to apply some formatting to the most significant portion of the URL, or the remainder of the URL that is not an important portion thereof. Any formatting that allows you to distinguish that important part from the rest of the URL is sufficient, but the specific formatting may vary. Some examples of formatting that may be applied to important portions of the URL are shown in FIG. 3 and described below. The reformatted URL is provided to the user by the graphical interface 215. In this way, the user can more easily visually determine if he is in the expected location, thus reducing the likelihood that the user will be deceived to provide confidential information at an illegal site.

3 illustrates several different URLs formatted in accordance with certain embodiments of the present invention. For example, the first URL 310 represents the HTTP address of some content maintained at the domain "www.yourbank.com" 314. The URL also includes a protocol portion 312 indicating that this address is a number of HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) addresses on the Internet. This example URL 310 also includes a script portion 316 and a parameter portion 318 that convey additional information to the domain yourbank.com in connection with retrieving content from that site. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that many alternatives to the script portion 316 and the parameter portion 318 are possible.

In accordance with the present invention, domain portion 314 is a predetermined way of distinguishing that portion from the rest of the URL (e.g., protocol portion 312, script portion 316, and parameter portion 318). For example, bold) or highlighted. As suggested above, the domain name identifies the owner of the address associated with the URL and, by itself, conveys key information about the provider of the content at that site. Domain names can be easily verified using domain name registers or services (eg, "whois"), but for ordinary computer users, domain names can be difficult to discern within complex URLs. Displaying a domain name in a certain way to attract the user's attention is to discern any other part of the domain name, or any other important URL, such as the protocol used (for example, HTTP instead of HTTPS). Simplify

The second URL 330 identifies the content at one site in the domain "hackers.com" shown by the highlighted portion of the domain portion 334. In this example, domain portion 334 includes a highlighted domain name portion (ie, "hackers.com"), and an unhighlighted subdomain portion 332. Subdomain portion 332 generally identifies a computing device or subnetwork within a larger domain (ie, "hackers.com"). Many malicious or bad guys can use this domain name structure to trick users into simple or unwary users, in fact, simply viewing content retrieved from any machine called "yourbank" in the "hackers.com" domain. Have them believe that you are in the "yourbank.com" domain. For this reason, in one implementation, the subdomain portion 332 of the URL is larger domain portion 334 to avoid confusion, or in particular to draw attention to the fact that the user is not actually in the domain he thinks. ) Are not highlighted in the same way. Alternatively, subdomain portion 332 may be highlighted in some manner different from larger domain portion 334, such as displaying text in colored fonts.

The third URL 350 illustrates another way to highlight or highlight the domain portion 354 of the address. In particular, rather than (or in addition to) displaying the domain portion 354 in some highlighted manner, the remainder of the URL (eg, protocol portion 352 and expanded portion 358) may display the remainder of the URL. It can be made less de-emphasize by making it partially or sufficiently transparent or the like. While this is only one example, many other methods will be apparent to those skilled in the art that emphasize important portions of a URL or address and / or make less important portions less noticeable.

The fourth URL 370 represents the Secure HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTPS) address of the predetermined content maintained in the domain "www.yourbank.com" 314. The URL also includes a protocol portion 372 indicating that this address is a number of HTTPS addresses on the Internet. The protocol portion 372 is highlighted or highlighted in some way (bold in this example) to attract the user's attention to the fact that the protocol is a secure protocol.

Alternatively, the domain name may appear as an Internet Protocol (IP) address rather than an alphanumeric domain name. One example may be a domain indicated as "192.168.2.100". In this case, the entire numerical IP address may be highlighted in some way.

4 is an operational flow diagram generally illustrating a process 400 for highlighting a significant portion of a URL within a browser display. The processor 400 may be implemented on a computing device that resides and executes browsing software to access a location on a WAN, such as the Internet. Process 400 begins at step 410 where the browsing software receives a URL to retrieve content. The URL may be received in a number of ways, such as by being typed by the user or delivered to browsing software related to clicking on a link on a web page or in an electronic (eg, email) message.

In step 420, the URL received in step 410 is parsed to identify sensitive information. In one particular example, the URL is parsed to identify a domain name in the URL that defines the actual address of the content referenced by the URL. For example, the full URL may include more than one domain name, possibly as if the domain name was passed as a parameter in the URL. However, the domain name identified in this step is related to the domain from which the content is retrieved. In other implementations, in addition to or instead of a domain name, other portions of the URL may be identified as important portions. An example may be a specific protocol used to retrieve content. Important information can also be further classified by importance.

In step 430, the significant portion of the URL identified in step 420 is highlighted or otherwise highlighted and displayed by the browsing software. Highlighting or highlighting includes displaying the highlights using some visible effects, such as altered fonts (eg bold or enlarged fonts), different colors, or perhaps less noticeable parts of the URL. can do. Any technique for displaying an important portion (eg, domain name) in such a way that can be distinguished within a URL is acceptable. When the important parts are further classified by importance, step 430 may highlight the important parts step by step based on the importance. For example, an item closer to a domain may be highlighted more than an item farther from the domain.

Although the above-described process is illustrated and described in sequence, in other embodiments, the operations described in the steps may be performed in a different order, multiple times, and / or in parallel.

Example Operating Environment

The various embodiments described above can be implemented in a general computing system adapted as a server or client. Exemplary computer environments suitable for use in embodiments of the present invention are described below in connection with FIG. 5.

Example Computing Environment

5 illustrates a computing device of a sample that may be used in an embodiment of the invention. 5, one exemplary system for implementing the present invention includes a computing device, such as computing device 500. In the most basic configuration, computing device 500 generally includes at least one processing unit 502 and system memory 504. Depending on the exact configuration and type of computing device, system memory 504 may be volatile (eg, RAM), nonvolatile (eg, ROM, flash memory, etc.) or any combination of both. System memory 504 generally includes an operating system 505 and one or more program modules 506, and may include program data 507. This basic configuration of computing device 500 is shown in components in dashed line 508 in FIG. 5.

Computing device 500 may have additional features or functionality. For example, computing device 500 may also include additional data storage devices (removable and / or non-removable) such as, for example, magnetic disks, optical disks, or tapes. Such additional storage is shown in FIG. 5 as removable storage 509 and non-removable storage 510. Computer storage media may include volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. System memory 504, removable storage 509, and non-removable storage 510 are all examples of computer storage media. Computer storage media may include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, DVD or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage, or required information. There are any other media that can be used to store and accessed by the computing device 500, but are not limited to this. Any such computer storage media can be part of device 500. Computing device 500 may also include input device (s) 512, such as a keyboard 522, a mouse 523, a pen, a voice input device, a touch input device, a scanner, and the like. Output device (s) 514 may also be included, such as a display, speaker, printer, and the like. Such devices are well known in the art and need not be discussed at length here.

Computing device 500 may also include a communication connection 516 that allows the device to communicate with other computing device 518, for example, via a network. The communication connection 516 is an example of a communication medium. Communication media may generally be embodied in a modulated data signal, such as a carrier wave or other transmission mechanism, by computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data, and include any information delivery medium. The term "modulated data signal" means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. For example, communication media include, but are not limited to, wired media such as a wired network or direct wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared, and other wireless media. The term computer readable media as used herein includes both storage media and communication media.

While exemplary embodiments and applications have been illustrated and described, it should be understood that the invention is not limited to the precise configuration and resources described above. For the arrangement, operation and details of the methods and systems of the invention disclosed herein, various modifications, changes and variations may be made to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the claimed invention.

The present invention highlights or otherwise highlights important portions of the address, allowing the user to visually discern whether to trust the displayed content.

Claims (20)

A computer-implemented method for displaying an address within browsing software, the method comprising: Receiving an address identifying a location of content on a wide area network (WAN); Parsing the address to identify a significant portion of the address, the sensitive portion having a feature related to the legitimacy of the content; And Displaying the address in a graphical interface with the key portion highlighted to distinguish the key portion of the address from the rest of the address. Computer-implemented method comprising a. The method of claim 1, And the address comprises a universal resource locator (URL). The method of claim 1, And the address comprises a universal resource identifier (URI). The method of claim 1, And wherein the WAN comprises the Internet. The method of claim 1, The significant portion of the address comprises a domain name related to the location of the content. The method of claim 1, The significant portion of the address comprises a protocol used to retrieve the content from the location. The method of claim 1, The significant portion of the address is highlighted by displaying the significant portion using a different visual effect than the rest of the address. The method of claim 1, The significant portion of the address is highlighted by displaying the remainder of the address using a different visual effect than the significant portion. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for displaying an address within browsing software, comprising: The instructions are Receive an address that identifies the location of the content on the WAN, Parse the address to identify an important part of the address, the important part having a feature related to the legitimacy of the content; Displaying the address in a graphical interface with the key portion highlighted to distinguish the key portion of the address from the rest of the address. And a computer-readable medium comprising the same. The method of claim 9, And the address comprises a URL. The method of claim 9, And the address comprises a URI. The method of claim 9, The WAN is a computer-readable medium comprising the Internet. The method of claim 9, The significant portion of the address includes a domain name related to the location of the content. The method of claim 9, The significant portion of the address comprises a protocol used to retrieve the content from the location. The method of claim 9, The significant portion of the address is highlighted by displaying the significant portion using a different visual effect than the rest of the address. The method of claim 9, The significant portion of the address is highlighted by displaying the remaining portion of the address using a different visual effect than the important portion. A computer-readable medium encoded with a data structure, The data structure includes an address that identifies the location of the content on the WAN, The address includes an important part and the remainder; The important portion relates to the legitimacy of the content and is encapsulated using an emphasis that makes it possible to distinguish the important portion from the remainder. The method of claim 17, And the address comprises a URL or URI, or both. The method of claim 17, The important portion comprises a domain name related to the location of the content. The method of claim 17, The emphasis includes information causing the significant portion to be rendered on a display using a different visual effect than the remaining portion.

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